Aristotle’s Rhetoric in the Schoolroom

This chapter considers the conception of rhetoric implied by Hobbes’s use of Aristotle for teaching his pupil, the third Earl of Devonshire, in the early 1630s. Given the dominance of a Roman and, more specifically, Ciceronian understanding of rhetoric at the time, this was an unusual decision. But a neo-Aristotelian understanding of the art had begun to take shape by the early seventeenth century: an understanding visible in Hobbes’s prime source, Theodore Goulston’s bilingual edition of Aristotle’s Rhetoric, De Rhetorica seu arte dicendi (1619). Hobbes is shown to have been working with an understanding of rhetoric as a means of understanding what will serve to persuade a given audience on a given occasion: an understanding centred on the enthymeme and largely free from Ciceronian humanist notions of the moral value, civic necessity, and philosophic utility of the art.

Conclusion

The Conclusion summarizes the main claims advanced in the book. There was in Hobbes’s thinking no early commitment to a (Ciceronian) optimism about the value of rhetoric in which he first lost and then regained faith. Hobbes was, from first to last, committed to a limited, Aristotelian understanding of rhetoric, and was consistently concerned about the dangers it posed to civil society. His embrace of a reformed logical method involved an attempt to purge philosophy of the approximations of rhetorical reasoning. And although his definition of philosophy underwent some adjustments, Hobbes did not back away from his effort to liberate it from rhetoric. The Conclusion briefly sketches the lineaments of a new understanding of Hobbes’s humanism, establishing its Aristotelian character and pointing to the possible role played by Hobbes’s study of Aristotle’s Rhetoric in the establishment of his new method.

Poetry and Natural History in the Peak

This chapter examines Hobbes’s Latin poem De mirabilibus pecci: an account of a tour of the ‘Wonders’ of the Derbyshire Peak. The chapter argues that in its concern with Derbyshire mining practices and hydrology, based on the study of such local phenomena as the underground river flowing out of the Peak Cavern (Devil’s Arse) and the ebbing and flowing well, the poem demonstrates Hobbes’s conversance with neo-Aristotelian meteorology and Renaissance naturalism. It shows also his commitment to the Baconian project of natural history, as it gathers information about areas of knowledge Bacon had marked as deficient: regional marvels and the practices of mechanical artists.

Introduction

The Introduction traces the history of modern scholarship on Hobbes’s understanding of rhetoric and its relationship to the development and articulation of his philosophy, arguing that this has been misconstrued. The received view that Hobbes began as a Ciceronian humanist who rejected an early confidence in the value of rhetoric on turning to science around 1640, only to re-embrace it as a necessary part of civil philosophy in Leviathan is called into question by scrutiny of some of the key passages commonly adduced in its support. Hobbes’s critique of that humanist mantra, the association of ratio and oratio (an association unstable even in its classical source) represents not a narrow attack on oratory, but a broad concern about the character of human language. Second, Hobbes’s apparent insistence, at the close of Leviathan, on the need for reason to be backed by eloquence involves a misreading of that much cited passage.

Civil History and Style in Thucydides

This chapter examines Hobbes’s translation of Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War. Hobbes found in Thucydides’ account of the rise of the Athenian demagogues a case study in the dangers of rhetoric to the state. This interpretation he pointed up through annotation and illustration (including the title page cut by Thomas Cecill). Hobbes’s Thucydides bears witness to a distinctive attitude towards the truth of history, which is no longer to be found in the moral exemplars promoted by traditional humanism. It displays the influence of Bacon’s politic history, and reveals a commitment to anti-Ciceronian canons of style.

Rhetoric and Leviathan

This chapter examines Hobbes’s use of rhetorical techniques in Leviathan. It argues that the rhetorical texture of Hobbes’s presentation of his civil philosophy in Leviathan differs from that in earlier statements (in The Elements of Law and De cive) less than is usually claimed. And it argues that the most distinctive rhetorical aspect of Leviathan is the application, in its final part, of the full range of rhetorical figures of scorn in an extended attack on the church of Rome—an attack that is unprecedented in Hobbes’s earlier works and which is the product of a new agenda rather than a changed opinion on the character and status of rhetoric.

Discovery, Proof, and Style

This chapter examines Hobbes’s understanding of the problem with rhetoric in philosophical and political reasoning. Although the problem is generally treated as stylistic or elocutionary (rhetoric allows a speaker to persuade someone of something that may not be strictly true), Hobbes saw it as more fundamentally a problem of inventio or discovery: the relaxed procedures of rhetorical proof compromise the reasoning process. The chapter examines Hobbes’s analysis of the undermining, by rhetorical reasoning, of the foundations of Western philosophy and political authority, and the exploitation by interested parties—especially the church—of inadequately defined and ambiguous terms such as ‘people’, ‘liberty’, ‘tyranny’, ‘conscience’, ‘hell’, ‘bishop’, and ‘excommunication’. Hobbes’s partial admission, in Leviathan, of certain elocutionary techniques to the communication of philosophical thought is shown to be limited in scope, falling well short of a full rapprochement between philosophy and rhetoric, and (as in his treatment of counsel) inconsistently maintained.

Logic, Rhetoric, and Philosophy

This chapter examines the process by which Hobbes, in the 1630s and early 1640s, began to establish a strong contrast between eloquence on the one hand and the procedure he terms ‘logic’ on the other. It argues that the contrast did not involve a wholesale rejection of rhetoric, but was, rather, an attempt to point up the necessity for philosophical discovery of the new logic Hobbes was currently attempting to develop. There was, for Hobbes, nothing wrong with rhetoric as such; the problem lay in philosophy, which he saw as having failed to produce certain knowledge (scientia) because of its reliance on the procedures of rhetorical argumentation (in particular, the enthymeme). The chapter argues for the significance, in his philosophical development, of Hobbes’s search for certain knowledge of ethics through close study of Aristotle’s account of the passions in the second book of his Rhetoric.

Noble Tutor

This chapter investigates Hobbes’s teaching of William Cavendish, second Earl of Devonshire, at Hardwick Hall, Derbyshire in the 1610s. It sets Hobbes’s tutoring in the general context of aristocratic education in early-modern England, and, through evidence of library purchases and surviving manuscripts, explores the particular context of tutoring at Hardwick. In so doing it confirms the distinctively aristocratic and Tacitean complexion of humanism at Hardwick. The chapter examines the composition of the Discourse against Flatterie and the other essays and discourses appearing in Horae subsecivae, evaluating the influence on them of Bacon, and demonstrating their dependence on Joseph Lange’s anthology, Polyanthea nova. These works are shown to constitute something of an apology for young Cavendish’s various indiscretions.